


Run Parallel

by Sharksdontsleep



Category: Luke Cage (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon, Prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 02:30:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15233391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharksdontsleep/pseuds/Sharksdontsleep
Summary: Shades learns to count in prison.Che laughs the first time he says it - Hernan, back when he was Hernan and not Shades - had spent most of algebra class copying Che's work, but of course he could count."I can put two and two together, asshole," Shades says. "I just meant - I can count, I just haven't been counting like this, before."





	Run Parallel

**Author's Note:**

> Coming out of retirement (?) for this. dontsleepsharks at gmail and tumblr. Feedback appreciated.

Shades learns to count in prison.

Che laughs the first time he says it - Hernan, back when he was Hernan and not Shades - had spent most of algebra class copying Che's work, but of course he could count.

"I can put two and two together, asshole," Shades says. "I just meant - I can count, I just haven't been counting like this, before."

"Yeah," Che says. "I mean, I feel that, I guess." They're shelving books in the library, a sweet gig that means they mostly goof off or Shades mostly does while Che devours books on economics like they're titty magazines.

Thing is, everyone does two days, the day they get in and the day they get out. Whatever's in between isn't supposed to count.

Except of course, you counted every minute, every second. The first thing Shades did on the inside was get a pack of Sharpies, skinnier than the ones they used to write on school desks or subway seats with, and begin to draw lines below where his thin prison mattress, thinner than what he'd slept on, even as a kid, met the metal bed frame. One line per day, a set of tally marks that tracked how many days he'd wasted shut up in here.

Che doesn't count, if only because Shades' tallies count for him. "My pops used to say that a good soldier doesn't ask when he's coming home from the war," he says, shrugging. He's like that, mild until he isn't, same expression reading Malcolm Gladwell or hosing teeth out of the fighting ring. At least Shades doesn't have to hear much about the second, because he's there too, running buckets of soapy water onto someone else’s blood.

Prison is prison. Mostly, it's boring, except when someone gets stabbed and they didn’t have anything to do with it. They spend three days on lockdown, lights out for 12 hours and meals slopped onto trays that they eat just to relieve the boredom. Che does push-ups and reads and jerks off noisily, and Shades feels like his skin is on too tight, a gun held by someone with no trigger discipline - ready to go off at the least provocation.

"You should read this shit," Che says, on day two of lockdown, when Shades feels like he's going to hurl himself against the bars, just to fucking feel something. "This shit they got away with - rob a store and you end up in here. Rob a million people and they just fucking fine you or put you on house arrest or some shit."

"That what you're reading for?" Shades asks. "Trying to be some white-collar kind of motherfucker."

Che gives him that 'no shit' look, like he would when Shades would say something dumb to him in front of his mom. The kind that looks hard if Shades didn't know him like he did - couldn't see that little edge of a smile tugging the corner of Che's mouth.

Shades knows him, but Che knows him right back, knows that he's about as likely to read a book on Enron as he is to start rescuing little old ladies or whatever it is that freak in Hell's Kitchen does.

But he also knows him enough to see the jiggle in his leg, the way he was eying the bars like they were closing in, and so he just sits on Shades' bed and turns to a part that's apparently the most interesting and starts reading, like they're back in Mrs. Morales' second grade class and this is storytime on the rug with the alphabet letters.

It helps, though, Che reading smooth enough that Shades can lie back, picture big houses with five-car garages, private jets, buying art just to show he could blow money on something useless. The American dream, or at least, the dreams of a kid from Ponce who'd come with no money and no English, and wound up in the fucking American correctional system. Like trying to get his was something that needed correcting.

Still, it helps, especially when Che goes on some kind of tangent about wealth redistribution and they just get into the game the normally got into at times like these - about money and what money could let them have.

"Thanks, man," Shades says, an hour later, when the guards slide dinner through on trays, a set of numbers for the game they're running stuck to the bottom of one. He feels more like himself, less like he's gonna do something stupid that even Rackham can’t fix. He knows he’s capable of murder with no other aim but the killing; but there’s no strategy in it, no hustle. Besides, there’s no money in solitary or Che, either. The thought is enough to keep him sane - for now. 

"Shit been getting to you, even before this lockdown nonsense," Che says. "Whatever you need, you know I got your back. We came in together, and we gonna get out together."

"Counting on it," Shades says, and accepts Che knocking his shoulder into his.

Even off lockdown, and it’s still prison. He dreams of stupid things, the cigarettes they stole from the bodega when they were kids, Che's mom's cooking, the way a girl from down the way whose name he doesn't remember had looked that summer, shorts so short they cut up on the sides of her hips, no bra and a tank top stuck to her chest in the heat.

He wakes up hard, no surprise there, jerks off and feels every day of his sentence weighing on him - feels the weight of Che watching him across the cell on him too, but they're up in each other's teeth in this place, and so he just grunts when he's done and wipes his hand on a sock.

He doesn't pick fights, but he doesn't back down, either, and some new asshole steps to him and he steps right back. He spends a blissful day pretending to hurt more than he does to get the sad baby aspirin from the infirmary, which they crush up and mix with real heroin and sell to the junkies who wouldn't know the difference anyway.

He does get three stitches above his left eyebrow, soon enough that the cut won't scar, but they're not the dissolving kind, either, and some other asshole tries to rip them out of his head over a dispute about being separated from cigarettes he clearly owes Shades.

Che puts the guy on the floor, puts plenty of his blood and a couple of his teeth there for good measure, and reiterates to the motherfuckers from the next cell block that they ain't rivals because Shades Alvarez and Comanche Jones don't got any of those. 

"When we get outside, you gonna go back to boxing?" Shades asks, when his head has stopped bleeding. Che's hands are still swollen, but he's pleased with himself, pleased in that way of his when he'd reminded folks that he's only quiet because he lets Shades do the talking.

"No," he says. "Rather count my money instead." His knuckles hurt enough that he winces when Shades taps his against them.

"Sorry," he says, and then, "If I gotta be here, glad you're in here too."

Che gives him one of those looks, the kind where he can't believe Shades just said something that dumb. "If you gotta be here," he says, "glad I'm here too. Someone's gotta keep you outta trouble."

"You like trouble," Shades says, and something about it makes Che laugh, and sling his arm across his shoulders.

"Yeah, baby," he says. "I really do."

If Shades is counting the days in prison, he's counting the seconds at night. It's hot, of course, the kind of New York hot where everything seems to slow down, hot like a hand in the center of your chest. Guys strip down, jumpsuits down to their waists in the yard or sit around in their boxers if they can get away with it.

It should be better at night, but it's worse somehow, heat and no fans to move air, a thousand guys sweating and stinking and threatening to shank each other for dumb shit.

Che sleeps, because he can sleep through anything - gunshots, a thunderstorm, his neighbors who were always either screaming at each other or fucking each other's brains out or both. 

He snores, too, and it normally doesn't irritate Shades. But by the fifth night of the heatwave, it does. Everything does. His balls are sticking to his legs and his arms to his sides and he feels like he might lose his goddamn mind if he doesn't get some shut-eye before being woken up at the ass-crack of whenever to go bake in the yard while the guards bet on who’s gonna be the first to crack. 

It's him, clearly, especially when the guy in the next row of cells starts screaming about something that happened before Shades was probably born and the whole place starts yelling back at him to shut the fuck up and the guards start banging their batons against the bars and -

Two hands come down over Shades' ears and he almost panics for a moment - that someone got into their cell but the bars are still shut, casting slatted shadows across them, and it must be Che.

It doesn't block out all the noise, but it blocks enough that it feels like relief. "Sleep," Che says, like he's the one that gives orders and not Shades, but Shades counts his breaths, seven beats on an inhale and seven on an exhale, and falls asleep between one breath and the next.

He wakes up with his dick hard in his shorts and Che in his bed, sitting above him on Shades’ already flat pillow. He doesn't remember his dreams other than that they were the kind of good where a few quick jerks would get him taken care of, and he considers reaching down and just doing it, even with Che's hands still loosely bracketing his head, slack in sleep.

Che can sleep through anything, except of course Shades moving around now, and he stirs, one hand going to rub his eyes, the other still on Shades' ear. "You sleep OK?" he asks, and then Shades can feel the rumble of his laugh when he sees how hard Shades is. "Yeah, you dreamed good too."

Shades considers telling him to get the fuck back on his side of the cell, to at least pretend he's not gonna lie there watching when Shades jerks off. He considers licking his own hand and just sticking it in his shorts now, mostly to see if Che'll flee on his own.

He doesn't. Because Che doesn’t give him time - just leans over Shades' body, big hand wrapping around him and it doesn't take much - especially not with someone else there instead of Shades, especially not with the right amount of friction and a rhythm different from his usual one. Shades comes like that, a minute later, on Che's hand and wrist, grunting into the Che's stomach where he leans over him.

Che's hard too, and it wouldn't be hard to reach up and return the favor, except Che's wiping his hand off and doing his normal morning shit like this wasn't anything, like it might have just been an extension of a dream, something to be done between doing pushups and talking about whatever Gordon Gekko motherfucker he's reading about now.

It's prison, and there's only two things that count - the day you get there and the day you leave, and nothing in between.

The heat doesn't break that day or the day after that. Shades dreams about the ocean at night, his grandfather's little rocking fishing boat, and wakes up with Che across the room, feeling as far away as Harlem does from Ponce.

Another day of sweating in the yard, another day of trying to scam guys out of cigarettes, ramen noodles, soap that doesn't dissolve the second you unwrap the bar. Basic trifling shit, and when they get out of here, Shades is gonna buy one of those suburban-mom-size packs of Dove and use as much every shower as he pleases.

The heat's getting to all of them - even Rackham's shut down the fights for a few days, since so many have broken out in the yard that no one feels like betting on a staged one.

Shades feels like his body's boiling under his skin, and he picks fights with everybody, even guys he likes, guys they need to run their business, over bullshit, until Che calmly gets up in the middle of a chess game and tells him to cut that shit out.

It gives him something to focus on, and so he focuses on trying to fight Che, who looks at him wearily, like Shades punching him is somehow just exasperating, and then grabs him by the back of his neck and drags him back to their cell.

Shades fights him, for long enough to show that he still can, even if by the time they get back, Che just looks pissed off. "You wanna go, Hernan?" he asks, and doesn't wait for a response before shoving Shades back onto his own bed and sitting on him, legs on either side of Shades' hips, hands cuffing his wrists.

Some part of Shades wants to go limp and surrender, but a bigger part of him wants to buck up against Che's legs and Che actually laughs at him, like this is something cute and not fucking humiliating.

"Let me go," Shades says.

"So you can go pick a fight with Skinny Joe? How else we gonna get cigarettes, if not through his fat ass?"

He knows it, too, but his rational mind, the cold part of himself that lets him sit back all got burned off with this heat - the same heat that’s pouring off Che now, his body warm and pressing Shades’ down, and their hips are grinding together, and the bones in his wrists are grinding together in Che’s grip, and he feels like he might fly apart without Che pressing him down, keeping him together, keeping his mind in his head and - 

“I got you, B,” Che says, leaning down. “I thought you knew.” 

And Shades doesn’t count how many times they kiss, after the first.


End file.
